What Does OK Boomer Mean And Why Does Gen Z Keep Saying It?

Its an age-old story. Someone always older, often a man and often white shares an opinion on something. Kids these days dont know how hard we had it, or when I was your age we walked to school uphill both ways.

Then, in overwhelming numbers, comes some variation of the response.

OK boomer.

It happened earlier this week, when Oscar-winning movie director Martin Scorsese who, for the record, was born in 1942 and actually pre-dates most Boomers wrote an op-ed for the New York Times arguing that Marvel movies arent cinema.

For anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out, the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art, Scorsese wrote.

The replies were quick and dripping with distaste for the old way of doing things.

Martin Scorsese has penned the ultimate aesthetic version of utterances that occasion \"ok boomer.\" Such gatekeeping as he is doing here is sad, unnecessary, and defensive, the dying breath of an irrelevant modernist way of viewing culture https://t.co/omxOZPfJgA

Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) November 5, 2019","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Nick Gillespie","author_url":"https://twitter.com/nickgillespie","cache_age":86400,"description":"Martin Scorsese has penned the ultimate aesthetic version of utterances that occasion \"ok boomer.\" Such gatekeeping as he is doing here is sad, unnecessary, and defensive, the dying breath of an irrelevant modernist way of viewing culture https://t.co/omxOZPfJgA Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) November 5, 2019\n\n","options":{"_hide_media":{"label":"Hide photos, videos, and cards","value":false}},"provider_name":"Twitter","title":"Nick Gillespie on 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Martin Scorsese has penned the ultimate aesthetic version of utterances that occasion "ok boomer." Such gatekeeping as he is doing here is sad, unnecessary, and defensive, the dying breath of an irrelevant modernist way of viewing culture https://t.co/omxOZPfJgA
Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) November 5, 2019

Often preceded by a casual lol that phrase OK boomer is the rallying cry of a generation, albeit one delivered with a smarmy eye-roll. There are OK boomer hoodies, OK boomer songs and OK boomer hashtags. We are living in the age of OK boomer.

This blunt putdown of the Baby Boomer generation of people like Scorsese largely defined as people born in the post-Second World War period of 1944 to 1965 usually comes in response to older people who just dont get it, or who call younger generations sheltered. Its an expression, albeit a flippant one, that in fact its the older generations who dont understand things.